Gravity Box and Other Spaces (6 page)

“She can't. The Sheriff won't put Brice Miller in jail till he has Esther back.”

“Why not? He's a goddamn murderer!”

Bert shook her head. “It's complicated.”

Egan rubbed his face. “We have to get out of Saletcroix. I lost my car keys in the fire.”

“‘We'?”

“Well, yeah. Esther can't stay here. Next time she might not be so lucky.”

Bert seemed disappointed in the answer, but she said nothing. She went to the hallway and peered into her bedroom.

“This is as much my fault as anything,” she said.

“How's that? I didn't see you stalking my house with a shotgun.”

“Esther wouldn't have run off if I hadn't filled her head full of ideas.” She came back into the living room and sat down in her wingback chair. “I'd been running The Pumphandle for about two years before I met her. She came in with her husband for a few minutes. He had to talk to Ralph Stimson about something, and Ralph was drinking heavily then. The only place you could find him was my bar. She acted like she'd never seen such a place before. I mean, everything amazed her. Frightened her.
Fascinated her. A few days later she came back alone. She asked me what it was I did there. When I told her I owned The Pumphandle, she just stared at me like I was talking Chinese or something. ‘Who's your husband?' she asked. ‘Isn't one,' I told her. ‘How do you get by like that?' And it began. About once a week, sometimes twice, Esther Miller came in to learn about—things.”

“Things?”

Bert frowned at him. “She didn't know anything. I mean, nothing, not even what year it was. So I started asking about her. None of the men would say a word. It was Mrs. McCutcheon who finally told me about Esther. Not that I believed a word of it, but I figured that if everyone else around here believed it, this had to be the saddest case of barefoot-and-pregnant I'd ever seen.”

Bert became silent, staring toward the bedroom. Egan waited until he became sure she had forgotten him.

“So what did the old lady say?”

“Hmm? Oh. Lot of folklore nonsense.” Bert drew in a deep breath. “The short version of it is that Esther is the personification of the valley's soul. When she's quiet, happy, and cared for, the valley prospers. When she isn't—”

“Everything goes to hell.”

“Basically.”

“You don't believe that.”

Bert grunted. “Would you? The point is these folks here
do
believe it.”

Egan thought about what he had seen in the woods. “I saw—”

“What?”

“Nothing. It's not important.” He cleared his throat. “What if it's true? How do you feel about that?”

Bert looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged. “I'd think how unfair it was that this little pocket of back country should have something that guarantees prosperity and the rest of the country, hell, the world, has to get by on its own. I mean, what did Saletcroix ever do to deserve that kind of special treatment?”

“Yeah. Other than take care not to lose it?”

Bert grunted.

“What do you suggest we do?” Egan asked.

“Once more I ask ‘We'?”

“You just finished telling me how this is so much your fault.”

Bert snorted and shook her head. “I already did too much, and it got me a black eye and sore ribs. I'm not in the rescue business anymore.”

She turned her back on him and walked out of the room. A moment later, Egan heard water running from the bathroom. He let his head fall back against the couch and stared at the ceiling, a distant ringing in his ears telling him that he was stressed and anxious and frightened.

I should just walk away, like every other time.

He crossed to the bedroom door and looked into the gray-on-gray collection of shapes until he made out Esther Miller's outline beneath the blankets on Bert's bed. He regretted not staying with Bert the night before, not just because of the complications that had developed since.

“What do you want to do?”

Egan turned. Bert stood in the center of her small living room, arms folded, face set in forced calm.

“I don't know. Do you have a suggestion?”

“You could turn her over to the sheriff.”

“What would he do with her?”

“Give her back to Brice.”

“What would he do to her?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't get this. What happened to the law? Brice's responsible for property damage and probably a death.”

“He's responsible for Esther, first and foremost. He's the one who was designated. It's his responsibility. He can't take care of her if he's in jail.”

“Designated by who? This is making less and less sense. Everybody here is willing to go along with that?”

Bert shrugged. “What are you willing to go along with for what you believe?”

“I don't—”

He had been about to say that he believed in nothing. He stopped, though, to wonder if that were true.

“You have to understand,” Bert went on, “that people here don't think much of abstracts. They're pretty basic; what affects the community has to be handled first.” She shook her head. “Some would say that makes them simple. I don't think there's anything simple about these folks.”

“Burning down houses seems like a hell of a community problem.”

Bert raised her finger at him, mouth open to bark in anger, but the sound he heard came from the bedroom behind her. She frowned, as if unsure she had heard anything. It came again, a groan like the distant sound of ice shifting just before it calves and drops into the sea, or the moan of iron in path of a hurricane, but far away and low, so that it blended with the blood in his ears.

Egan knew it had to be Esther. He pushed past Bert and rushed into the bedroom. Esther lay on the bed in a pose of torment, on her side, back arched and face buried in pillow. One leg quivered.

“Esther—?” Bert called softly.

Esther sat up so suddenly that Egan expected to hear the sound of bones snapping. Her eyes were large and desolate.

“It's burning,” she gasped.

Egan and Bert exchanged a puzzled glance, and then they heard the sirens far off in the distance.

Bert and Egan rushed to the window. The smoke reminded Egan of the news footage from Kuwait, when the Iraqis had set all the oil wells afire. It poured up as if trying to shove the sky away. Egan knew without question that the center of the blaze was the A-frame. From the span of horizon that gushed black, churning clouds, the fire was out of control and eating up one wall of the valley.

They crowded into Bert's truck and drove up to the main road. Bert squealed to a halt in front of the sheriff's office across from The Pumphandle.

They entered to find Edmunds leaning over a desk strewn with paper and phones, his face dirty and sweat-smeared. He glanced up once when Egan, Bert, and Esther came into his office, then looked a second time, harder.

“I'll call you back,” he said and hung up. He strode toward Egan, his face unreadable under the grime. “What in hell you done, you stupid shit?!”

“Carl!” Bert shouted.

People shuffled. Bert tried to block Sheriff Edmunds while Egan tried to push Esther back from harm's way, Edmunds ducked around Bert and inside Egan's guard more deftly than Egan would have thought possible for a man of his bulk. Egan did not even see the fist, only felt a sharp pain beneath his right eye and the frenzied groping for a handhold as he fell back through the door.

“You're goin' back right now, do you fuckin' hear me? This's gotta stop!”

Egan opened his eyes to see Edmunds towering over Esther, her back against the doorjamb, shouting at her.
Bert had a grip on his shirt collar and was trying to pull him back.

“This ain't fun no more, Esther! You're fuckin' with our lives now!”

“Carl!” Bert screamed again. “Brice set the fire!”

Edmunds shrugged her off. “Wouldn't be no fire 'less she hadn't run off like some dope-headed adolescent!”

Egan got to his feet, surprised at how steady he seemed to be.

“Have you got help coming?” he asked.

Edmunds glared at him. “Don't press me.”

“You're going to need professionals to fight this.”

“All we need is her,” he stabbed Esther's shoulder with a middle finger, “back where she belongs, and you,” he jammed the same finger into Egan's chest, “to get the hell outta Saletcroix before it gets worse than it is!”

“Carl, not even Esther can damp this down,” Bert said. “Egan's right; we need help.”

Edmunds continued staring hard at Egan, as if the pressure of his anger could somehow cause hurt. Finally, he shook his head.

“I already called in. They're musterin' planes over in Fairfield. County seat knows. They're pullin' together fire departments and volunteers.” He snorted and turned away. “Just hope it's enough.”

Esther stared at him, wordless, her face puzzled. “I didn't set the fire,” she said quietly. “Why am I to blame?”

Edmunds glared at her. “You ain't where you belong.”

After a silent span of time Esther went outside. Egan watched her go, felt himself drawn to follow, but he stayed inside the sheriff's office. I need to leave, he thought, as usual—

He cleared his throat. “How can I help?”

The small Saletcroix fire department had put out the A-frame within two hours of it going up, but cinders had drifted up the slope behind it, into the trees, out of sight. Most of the embers guttered long before touching anything dry, but a few found beds of leaves and twigs where they sparked into new life, and by mid-afternoon the slope was on fire. The blaze spread fast through drought-parched scrub, spores of new sparks travelling the breezes now whipped into frenzied gusts by the building heat storm. Now, close to twilight, the fire was hectares-wide and monstrous.

Egan helped Bert load up her truck with coolers of sandwiches and sodas and three big steel water cans and Styrofoam cups. Esther sat against the wall by the door of The Pumphandle, staring up at the smoke. He wanted to talk to her, but everything about her made him feel unwelcome, unnecessary. She was concerned with the fire, not him; she seemed to be drawing herself in tight, as if preparing for confrontation. She acknowledged nothing outside the blaze especially not the angry glares of the locals who spotted her. None of them spoke to her and Egan was not sure what he would do if any of them approached her, but he felt protective and frustrated.

“Bert,” Sheriff Edmunds came up to her. “We're setting up operations on Cavanaugh's place, so take this up there. It's closer to the leading edge of the fire. They think they can dig a break and stop it from there.”

“Cavanaugh,” she nodded. “Right. You coming, Esther?” Bert shouted through the driver's window of her truck.

In acknowledgement, Esther shuffled across the yard to Bert's truck. Egan followed her and opened the passenger door and squeezed in beside her. He felt a shameful exhilaration rush through him to be so near to
her. Knowing it was wrong had no effect on his racing heart or his wild yearning.

There was no conversation as Bert drove south and turned onto a gravel road heading west. It climbed the ridge that formed the south wall of the valley until it entered a broad shelf of farmland. Bert stopped and looked over at Esther.

“This is Mrs. McCutcheon's place,” Esther said. She sounded afraid.

“Cavanaugh's on the other side, Esther,” Bert said. “You know that. I want you to head over to her house and wait there. You'll be safe there.” Egan wanted to protest. He almost tried to protest, but he instead he let Esther out and continued on with Bert to Cavanaugh's.

The Cavanaugh house sat atop a rise that overlooked acres of soy. The far side of the field was bordered by forest. Beyond that untouched border, rose a column of smoke and somewhere beneath that column a fire raged drawing in air and exhaling a pervasive furnace glow of heat.

Egan had to force himself out of the truck. People stared at him as he helped set up a long portable aluminum table and lay out the food and drinks. He chose to ignore them.

Lights were being set up from one of the larger vehicles and hooked to a portable generator. The eastern sky was already the flat cobalt blue of dusk.

Mrs. McCutcheon separated herself from the crowd. Egan smiled at her, noticing for the first time the multitude of delicate lines that criss-crossed her face which spoke of a hardscrabble life.

“Mrs. McCutcheon?” he said.

“Mr. Ginter,” she replied in New England tones clear and sharp. “Where's Esther?”

“She—”

“Where is she?” a different voice cut the air.

Egan looked around. Bert was moving away from the table, through the small throng of men gathered for sandwiches and drinks.

“Where's Esther?”

Egan felt a chill run from his scalp to the small of his back as he recognized Brice Miller's voice.